Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise in support of the motion moved by the member for Groom highlighting the incidence of drownings in our nation. The Royal Lifesaving national drowning report 2016reports that in the 12 months between 1 July 2015 and 30 June 2016 there were 280 drownings in this country; 280 people lost their lives. And 63 of those deaths occurred at our beaches; 58 occurred in our rivers, creeks and streams; 53 occurred in oceans and harbour locations; and 45 occurred in swimming pools. That is a five per cent increase on the previous year, when 267 people lost their lives from drowning in Australia. Even though it is slightly below the long-run average, this is far, far too many people losing their lives.

What policies can we look at as legislators to try to reduce this total? We obviously need to ensure that more young children learn to swim. The issue we have—if we look at our housing policies in our cities—is that more and more children are growing up in high-rise apartments, where they are unlikely to have a backyard swimming pool. In my experience, growing up in Peakhurst, a middle-class suburb in the south of Sydney, many of our neighbours had a simple above-ground swimming pool. We got in them as kids and we learned to swim. That opportunity will be denied to thousands of young kids—because of the change in the housing policy of this nation—because more and more children are growing up in high-rise apartments.

The other issue we need to address is the high cost of swimming lessons. Look at the cost of running a swimming centre. I have several in my electorate. One is the indoor Menai Swimming Academy that I visited recently. The owners explained to me that their biggest cost of running the centre is their electricity. They have to continually filter the water. It has to go through the filtering systems once every 24 hours. They also have the cost of heating the water. I hate to harp on this but the owners looked at the increases projected in their electricity costs and, under previous policies, if we allow electricity costs to increase in this country he would be paying an extra $100,000 in electricity up to the year 2020.

I do not want to make this issue on drownings a partisan issue.

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